disturbing implications
I've had the experience in the past couple years of realizing that the things I believe have implications that are difficult to accept.
The biggest example (at least in the past) was my beliefs regarding human autonomy (or its relative lack thereof). As I thought more and more about what it meant for humans to possess the degree of freedom that they do, I realized that other belief systems of mine had to be compromised, most noticably regarding morality.
I've had similar thoughts in recent days regarding moral relativism, in which I also believe. More specifically, I am beginning to understand that much work in international development (and social justice work in general) presupposes an idea of what is 'good.' For better or worse, many people who beleive in justice see a situation that they deem 'bad,' and then intervene in the attempt to make it 'better.'
On the one hand, I never saw this as too much of a problem because it doesn't seem too controversial to designate human suffering as 'bad.' Yet, the deeper I look and the longer I watch, the more I see that this may be just as controversial as any other moral question.
The biggest example (at least in the past) was my beliefs regarding human autonomy (or its relative lack thereof). As I thought more and more about what it meant for humans to possess the degree of freedom that they do, I realized that other belief systems of mine had to be compromised, most noticably regarding morality.
I've had similar thoughts in recent days regarding moral relativism, in which I also believe. More specifically, I am beginning to understand that much work in international development (and social justice work in general) presupposes an idea of what is 'good.' For better or worse, many people who beleive in justice see a situation that they deem 'bad,' and then intervene in the attempt to make it 'better.'
On the one hand, I never saw this as too much of a problem because it doesn't seem too controversial to designate human suffering as 'bad.' Yet, the deeper I look and the longer I watch, the more I see that this may be just as controversial as any other moral question.
2 Comments:
it doesn't seem too controversial to designate human suffering as 'bad.'
What's controversial is not whether extreme and clear suffering is bad, but how best to end it (and whether you should try). E.g. as Nicholas Kristof of NYTimes writes, campaigning against sweatshops may actually hurt the people you're trying to help -- by pushing them out of sweatshops and into prostitution. And "oops, I didn't think of that unintended consequence" is not a valid excuse; you're responsible for thinking things through (or consulting with wiser people).
As Wislawa Szymborska notes in her poem "A Word on Statistics":
Out of every hundred people:
...
Those who are just:
quite a few, thirty-five.
But if it takes effort to understand:
three.
from Mountains Beyond Mountains:
"...They spent a lot of time defining themselves, rather often by defining what they weren't. WL's were forever saying, "Things arent' that black and white." But some things were plenty black and white, they told each other -- "areas of moral clarity," which they called AMC's. These were situations, rare in the world, where what ought to be done seemed perfectly clear. But the doing was always complicated, always difficult. They often talked about those difficulties. How Paul and Jim should balance work for PIH with going to school and getting their degrees. What PIH should do next in its adopted piece of Haiti, where AMC's abounded."
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